Have you ever watched a beer commercial and thought to yourself, If only those people had their own TV show!

Don’t scoff. That moment may be sooner at hand than you think. Just like everyone else, the mainstream broadcast networks are in vacation mode during the hot summer months, when even diehard shut-ins would rather be outside, taking advantage of the long daylight hours before summer is officially over, NHL training camps are open and the Leafs and Canucks are preparing for another long winter of discontent.

Summer TV’s economic model is simple enough: If it’s cheap enough to make, It’ll make money, regardless of how many people choose not to watch. It’s all about the ads. As long as someone — anyone — tunes in, there’ll always be products to sell and advertisers hoping to sell them.

Summer is a time for silliness and fun. And, as anyone old enough to remember such summer winners as Tommy Lee Goes to College and Dating in the Dark knows, the broadcast networks are champs when it comes to programming that can best be described as dumb and dumber. As cultural historian Craig Nelson notes in his pre-cable book Bad TV, the best in bad TV is predicated on the idea that you’re the only person in North America not having kinky sex 24 hours a day; you’re the only person in North America not considering your transgender surgery options; and you’re the only person in North America who doesn’t host a talk show.

True, the coming summer has some genuinely fine fare, most of it on the specialty and pay-TV channels. Magic City is back June 14, on Superchannel. True Blood returns June 16, on HBO. Inspector Lewis is back June 16, on PBS, followed by the Morse prequel series Endeavour on July 7. Dexter’s final season begins June 30 on The Movie Network and Movie Central. Hell on Wheels, filmed in Calgary, returns Aug. 3, on AMC. Breaking Bad’s final episodes start Aug. 11, also on AMC. The Killing is airing now, on AMC.

For most viewers, though, those casual fans who don’t make an appointment to watch but just flick on the TV to see what’s on, summer is literally an embarrassment of riches.

Here are 10 possibilities. They may not make you forget The Ring of Truth, a 1980s docuseries about the history of tools — no lie — or that summer-of-’05 classic, Tommy Lee Goes to College. But they’ll try:

They’re undercover, off the radar and hot to trot. As Sonny Crockett used to say on Miami Vice, “surf’s up, pal.” Household names Aaron Tvelt, Vanessa Ferlito and Daniel Sunjata star in a crime-busting caper series from the creator of White Collar, about undercover DEA, FBI and U.S. Customs agents who share a repossessed mansion on a beach in sunny Southern California. Beach volleyball in the mornings, busting perps in the afternoons — what could possible go wrong? Well, inter-agency rivalry, for one. Inevitable shacking-up issues, for another. Why not give Graceland a chance? After all, when you hear the word Graceland, you automatically think of California beaches.

What would summer TV be without at least one singing competition show? But wait, there’s more. The Winner Is … is the only where singing just six songs can win a lucky someone a cool $1 million. It’s also the only singing competition show hosted by Nick Lachey. Dude, seriously. Billed as the first of its kind, The Winner combines the performances of a singing competition with the cutthroat strategy of a game show, as contestants must choose whether to accept a cash prize or else risk it all and move on. Deal or no deal?

At last, a reality competition series that combines a dinner-theatre murder mystery with eating dinner in front of the TV. Whodunnit? pits 13 would-be Miss Marples and Hercule Poirots against each other in a test of wits to see who can decipher the clues behind murder-most-foul at a (fictional) country estate called Rue Manor. The crime-solving contestants include a former NFL cheerleader, a flight attendant, a local TV crime reporter and a real-life bounty hunter and private detective from Union County, New Jersey. There’s even a (faux) butler, Butler Giles, played by British character actor Gildart Jackson, who does double duty as a murder suspect and Whodunnit?’s erudite host. The butler did it, you say? That seems too easy.

On the one hand, Stephen King is the Master of Horror, a born storyteller, bestselling author and pop-cultural phenomenon who’s technically a better writer than many academics and literary snobs give him credit for. On the other, possibly no writer in living memory has been hosed as often by ratty TV adaptations of his work. The Langoliers! Storm of the Century! Rose Red! Kingdom Hospital! Bag o’ Bones! Now you can add to that list Under the Dome to the roster, an idea that — based on the idea alone — sounds like a terrific premise for a white-knuckle summer-long roller-coaster ride. The residents of a small town in Maine wake up one morning to find they’ve been cut off from the outside world by a huge, transparent dome. Imagine having to spend an entire summer without any resupply of beer or nachos, and no TV signals from outside. However will they cope?

Survivor is for sissies. That must have been the pitch behind this adventure reality series parent network NBC is billing as a “non-stop extreme survival journey.” Ten teams of two trekkers and would-be survivalists test themselves against the elements on New Zealand’s South Island, while aptly named outdoorsman Bear Grylls grills them on their outdoor skills then decides who to send home at the end of each day. Get Out Alive is not a race, its makers insist — perhaps hoping to distinguish it from The Amazing Race Canada, which bursts out of the gate July 15 — but “a life-changing adventure to reveal the raw survival spirit needed to get out alive.” Changing the channel is presumably not an option.

Seriously, now, why would you want to send the kids to summer camp when you can simply park them in front of the TV and avoid mosquito bites, sunburn, home sickness and all the inconveniences of experiencing something for real? Camp is a dramedy — TV-speak for we-don’t-know-if-it’s-a-drama-or-a-comedy — featuring Brothers & Sisters’ Rachel Griffiths as a recent divorcee who chooses to move on with her life by running a financially strapped summer hideaway called Little Otter Family Camp. According to the program notes, Little Otter offers fun for everyone. “Parents decompress over gin-and-tonics while their kids run wild and teenage counsellors fall in and out of love.” Did someone just say Meatballs? Shame on you.

Sean Hayes, late of Will & Grace, still remembers those fun “game nights” he used to have with his friends, when he was a struggling actor looking for that elusive break. Then, one day, he had an epiphany: Why not make it a TV show? Hollywood Game Night is a new, hour-long summer game show, in which, each week, host Jane Lynch invites a pair of ordinary, everyday TV fans to hobnob with B-list celebrities at a Hollywood cocktail party and impress one and all with their conversational skills and knowledge of TV, film, sports, politics and other topics. At the end, one of the two will walk away with a lifetime of stories, cherished memories and a cash prize. Big bucks! Big bucks!

Vampire Diaries recurring player Arielle Kebbel hosts a dating game show with a difference. In this one, players not only win a date with the person of their dreams, they can win a cash prize, too. Because nothing says “I love you” quite like a giant cash handout. Each week, two friends compete to see who can pick their best match from a group of 12 prospective singles, following mutual compatibility tests. The test results assign cash values to each possible match, and the player who selects the most compatible candidate — i.e. the one with the highest cash value — wins both the date and the cash! At last, TV has found a way to monetize true love.

There’s something about summer that says: Which would you rather do late on a Saturday night: Go out and play, or stay home and watch TV? The summer-long animation showcase Animation Domination High Def — ADHD for short — promises to bring you the best in sophisticated late-night animation. The emphasis is on “sophisticated.” Got that, kids? That explains such potential faves as High School USA!, about a group of super-positive millennial students who face the unique challenges of growing up a modem world. There’s nothing they can’t put positive spin on, from cyber-bullying to pill addiction to embarrassing texts. If that sounds a little lame and genteel to you, there’s always Axe Cop, about an awesome, axe-wielding cop and his crusty but benign sidekick Flute Cop. Together, they battle crime on two minutes of sleep a night, fuelled by a diet consisting solely of birthday cake. You know what they say about white sugar.

The Hunt

July 31, The CW

The Hunger Games meets Outward Bound in this new wilderness survival competition program. Twelve teams to two enter “The Arena,” a fenced-in compound in the middle of the wild, where they must compete against each other for scarce resources and survive for 30 days without beer, nachos and TV. But wait, there’s more. The teams are expected to hunt each other down in order to survive. At stake: $250,000 cash and the right to say they outwitted, outplayed and outlasted the competition. Oh, wait, that’s another show. Never mind.

Oddly, no advance publicity photos have been released. Yet.

Enjoy your summer. It’s going to be a long one.

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